Rep. Matt Gaetz Continues to Repeat Antisemitic and White Nationalist Conspiracies

Speaking on Fox News’ Justice with Judge Jeanine, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) said:

“There’s an attempted cultural genocide going on in America right now and it calls for patriots to stand up and say this is a great country, it is worthy of our pride and our defense. The left wants us to be ashamed of America so that they can replace America.”

This came two weeks after Gaetz claimed that the Black Lives Matter movement “is about making us hate America so we can replace America. Because as long as we love her, we will not allow someone to replace her.”

Both of Gaetz’s statements allude to Replacement Theory, a white supremacist conspiracy that alleges non-white people are coming into the United States to replace existing white populations, causing “white genocide” For white supremacists, Jews are the supposed masterminds behind this imagined conspiracy.

Gaetz is applying Replacement Theory to ongoing Black-led efforts to take down Confederate Monuments, presenting the removal of statues honoring historical figures who enslaved Black people as a campaign to “replace” American history. This is what Gaetz means by “cultural genocide” — a term eerily evocative of Replacement Theory’s warnings of “white genocide.”

Neither Gaetz’s statement on July 11 or June 29 were his first time promoting Replacement Theory. In 2018, Gaetz posted a video on Twitter of someone supposedly handing cash to immigrants. In his tweet, Gaetz stated that immigrants were being paid to “storm the US border @ election time” and posited that Jewish billionaire George Soros or American non-profits were behind the manufactured scheme. 10 days later, a white supremacist walked into the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, PA, and murdered eleven people in the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history. In his manifesto, the shooter cited Replacement Theory, writing that he targeted this specific synagogue because of its work with HIAS (a Jewish organization that provides humanitarian aid to asylum-seekers).

Multiple other white supremacists shooters have cited Replacement Theory in their deadly manifestos as well. The far-right extremist who tried to attack a synagogue in Halle, Germany, on Yom Kippur in 2020, and killed two people outside of it, shared an antisemitic, racist, and misogynistic posts prior to the attack. (On the first day of the Halle trial on July 21, ten days after Gaetz’s televised comments, the shooter will tell the presiding judge that “Jews are the main cause of white genocide”).

In the same segment on Judge Jeanine, Gaetz also likened the Black Lives Matter movement to the Confederacy, a statement as inaccurate as it is shockingly offensive:

“Black Lives Matter leaders who pledge allegiance to America's destruction have a more lot in common with Confederate generals they hate than they'd like to admit. The Confederacy initially wanted to kick out federal officials, destroy America and change it to something different.”

Evidently proud of this quote, Gaetz promoted it from his podcast, Hot Takes with Matt Gaetz.